E3 2012: Hands on with Sleeping Dogs

LOS ANGELES — Think of Sleeping Dogs’ combat system as Batman Arkham City, only with way more blood and gore.

Detective Wei Shen, the game’s main character is able to bounce between enemies executing and counter-attacks similar to Batman, except he can shove a person’s head into a spinning fan.

The gameplay demo Square Enix had available on the show floor only exposed a sliver of the open-world action game. In the demo level, Shen is chasing a suspect through a crowded market in Hong Kong. During the chase, Shen can jump over tables, knocking over food, and hop over fences.

He eventually runs into a group of thugs and has to dispatch them using his martial arts skills. Shen is capable of using objects in his environment to brutally injure his enemies, whether it’s using metal fans or simply smashing their head into a wall. Finding these environmental objects is easy, as any part on the environment that can be used for an attack will glow red.

While smashing enemies in all sorts of painful ways is fun, Sleeping Dogs’ combat feels a little loose compared to other action games on the market. I felt the counters and attacks could have been more responsive, especially when facing off against multiple foes.

It’s hard to give an impression of Sleeping Dogs since the E3 demo only allows you to experience the fighting portion of the game. Driving vehicles and gunplay are also going to be a big part of the overall experience. The demo also takes place in an enclosed space, making it impossible to get a sense of what gameplay possibilities lie in the open world of Hong Kong.

The market I explored in the demo felt incredibly alive. Store owners call out to you, making it easy to get distracted. Hopefully this same sense of atmosphere will be infused throughout the city in the final game.

Sleeping Dogs is on the right path with its combat design, I just hope the developers have a chance to refine it some more before the game launches.

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